Friends & family

Margaret Alva is the wrong person to throw stones at the Congress glass house. N.V.Subramanian comments.

By N.V. Subramanian (7 November 2008)

7 November 2008: Being a senior, (previously) rewarded member of the dynastic Congress party (which is, in a sense, no different from our family-run media and other businesses), Margaret Alva has every reason to feel aggrieved that those dynastic benefits don't flow to her own kith and kin. In the last Karnataka elections, one of her sons, Nivedith, was denied a Congress ticket from a supposed safe Bangalore seat. She alleged the machination of some currently high-flying Congress party managers, including Digvijay Singh (likely, off the record), the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister, who has emerged a key player in the party, next in importance, perhaps, to Sonia Gandhi's "political secretary", the ultra low-key Ahmed Patel.

What's the relevance of Alva's angst now? Alva has blown the lid on the large-scale "sale" of Congress tickets for the coming elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and other states. The Congress leadership (read Sonia and Rahul Gandhi) had put up some guidelines for ticket distribution, and electability and image were apparently to determine candidate's selection (don't smile, readers). Except that, to no one's surprise, those guidelines were followed in the breach, and tickets were sold to the highest bidder.
This writer knows of one case in Rajasthan, where Digvijay Singh has been one of the selectors. A particular ticket-seeker was asked to pay upfront Rs five lakh of the Rs fifty lakh for the ticket, and still did not get it, presumably because there was a higher bidder. Electability and image were certainly not the criterion in this case. Said a Congress insider, "Sonia and Rahul Gandhi could not be bothered who gets the ticket, and how, because they know the party is going to lose these assembly elections."
But there are deeper issues. Would Margaret Alva have blown the whistle if her son had not been denied the ticket? And how can the Gandhis set one rule for themselves (tickets for family and friends from wherever they choose, plus permanent claims on Amethi and Rae Bareli), and apply the principle of the straight and narrow to others? In a way, Margaret Alva has raised the second question, although, for public consumption, she has targeted Digvijay & Co. In truth, she blames Sonia Gandhi for not exerting on her behalf in Karnataka.
But even as this is written, this writer realizes Alva's executioners in the Congress will use precisely these arguments against her with Sonia and with (if the boy has any time) Rahul. But waste no sympathy on Margaret Alva. She has played her innings. She has held ministerships for long, and her regret, indeed anger, may arise, apart from an aborted "son rise', from being denied another run in government.
But would Alva have raised this whole stink now, agitated on principles on the manner of ticket-distribution for the election-headed states? Not a chance. Alva is angry at the possibility that the Alva political dynasty will end with her. And the question that arises from her "revolt", about different rules for the Gandhis and others, is the question to ask, but it is not for Margaret Alva to do the asking. As someone in the Congress party said, "She cannot slam the system and still be part of it."
But Margaret Alva's very personalized angst is easy to dismiss. (Although it should be said that whistleblowers have, ipso facto, to be part of any system they denounce.) The question is, how long will the Congress remain a dynastic political party? If you were to ask the Gandhis, and if they were to be candid in reply (both remote possibilities), they would say nobody is under compulsion to remain with the Congress.
Some people have tried to have careers outside the Congress in the Nineties, but without success. Arjun Singh, for one, and Madhavrao Scindia. Scindia, days before his tragic death, told this writer that successfully building a new political party was far from easy. It is ironic he said this in a coalition era when political fragmentation has made smaller (three to thirty-five MP) parties more important than ever before.
It is this, though, that may ultimately prove the death knell for the Congress party. This is a possibility that, honestly, this writer never considered before. If more Margaret Alva-type revolts brew and spurt - and there already are subterranean voices in support of her, in MP, Rajasthan, Delhi, and so on - then the Congress party may lose more than the Gandhis can recover.
What P.V.Narasimha Rao did to the Congress in the dying days of his prime-ministership (destroying it forever in North India), the Gandhis, incredible as it may sound, may end up doing again in the rest of the country. With one-hundred-and-forty-five MPs, the Congress party cannot survive a second desertion in a little over a decade.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, NewsInsight.net. Har-Anand has published his new second novel, Courtesan of Storms.
Please visit N.V.Subramanian's blog http://courtesanofstorms.blog.com/

About Us

There are three ways to tackle the issues that repress India. One is to shut our eyes to corruption, venal politicians, anti-entrepreneur bureaucrats, and a mindset against meritocracy. The second is to become part of the system, merge with an interest group, and feel guiltless about street children, rat-eaters, riot-victims, men and women who cannot spell their name, or vote-robbing...